Thanks once again to the programming excellence of SFR and his patience for my sometimes half-baked ideas, I'm pleased to attach an HotKey Help pet. Hopefully, its employment will ease the task a new computer user faces in learning how to accomplish anything.
I've said it before, but it's worth repeating. One of the problems faced by One-switch users is the time and effort they have to put in to accomplish anything in a “Mouse-centric” environment. Modules in Radar and Navbar make it possible. But just because it is possible to do something using those tools doesn't mean that's the only, or even the best, way to do it. Especially in a One-Switch environment, using a Hot-key combination can accomplish a task in a couple of seconds, with a couple of clicks, which would otherwise take minutes.
Along this same line, I again strongly recommend that anyone building a Pup for One-switch users include a version of the Xfe file manager. Don't take my word for it. Try it yourself. Using Radar or Navbar, perform some file management operations with Rox, or Thunar or pacmanfm. Then perform the same tasks, again using radar or Navbar but with Xfe in two-pane mode (or tree plus two-pane) using its Hot-keys. Which would you want to live with?
You'll find a couple of versions of xfe on the forum. Ttuuxxx's version, although older, has the advantage that it does not give the “using as root” warning requiring an “Ok” be clicked before use. Eliminating the warning requires a re-compile. As far as I know, all versions will work with any Pup. Moreover, Ttuuxxx's theme pet will work with any version of Xfe.
If you include firefox as a browser, or alternate browser, take the time to install the mouse-less browsing addon. I also recommend that you include a bookmark to that Addon's help page.
Obviously, it is impossible to include all the Hot-Key combinations for every possible application. The pet only provides Hot-keys information concerning Abiword, Geany, firefox and Xfe. But it also provides general Hot-Key advice, and specific advice regarding Leafpad, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
Those interested in learning gtk-dialog, or just grabbing an already useful widget, can take a look at the pet's executable: hotkeyhelp found in /usr/sbin.

Because of Forum attachment size restrictions [annoying, dumb, and demeaning to Puppy], “The pet” --it was 11 kb too big—is now in two parts. The pet itself excludes only unique and/or uncommon keyboard combinations which may only be of use to Power Users of the above applications. What was excluded from “the pet” will be included by installing the Supplemental.

At any rate, xvkbd's documentation includes instructions on how to open xvkbd at a specified location and with specified dimensions. As my desktop is 1600x900, this is the script I used, code:

#!/bin/sh
xvkbd -geometry 850x180+595+650 -always-on-top &

850x180 define the width and height, respectively. 596+650 identify the width and height co-ordinates for the top right corner of the keyboard. (Oddly, given that the width of the keyboard appears first, I think the first positioning number for the height placement co-ordinate. Set this up on my Thinkpad about 2 hours ago).

Hi Mike, I have written a script to use this method of starting xvkbd (I am trying to control where on screen it starts) but I find that the xvkbd window does not open up at the same position every time I run the script. Did you experience this also?
This is how I open xvkbd:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
xvkbd -geometry 850x180+595+650 -always-on-top &

I don't understand why the position would vary each time unless somehow jwm is over-riding the geometry info in the script. If so, why is this happening I wonder?

EDIT :Strangely - the behaviour seems to stabilise when I choose negative values and remove the trailing "&" eg:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
xvkbd -geometry -200-58 -always-on-top

This works ok for me at the moment (currently 1024x600 - will try other resolutions later)

I ran into the same problem when I tried to unplugged a USB-Key install from a computer where my formula worked into another where it didn't.
SFR was kind enough to email me the following formula, for placing the keyboard slightly to the left of radar. Code:

That would be ideal with layout switched bottom to top or doing row selection bottoms up. And if we use this with speech enabled it makes better since its A B C D.. you can predict what letter would be next without looking.

Hi Atle - at the moment I don't know of any joystick solutions in puppy. This is one of the things I want to work on once I have fully set up the one-switch pups to my satisfaction.

A joystick pup would probably benefit quickly from having a thread of it's own if there is not already one, as I think there are probably a significant number of forum members who might have info to offer due to their gaming experience.

One question would be - how much control does the disabled user have? Are they only able to use the four directions, or are they also able to manipulate the other mouse buttons etc that are on a gaming mouse? (I guess it depends on the individual disability...)

I shall install a laptop for a severely disabled person that can only use a joystick.

I am looking for the best solution by using Puppy and or even other Linux distroes.

This is a very long thread and I can not really get the grip of what is the best solution for someone that uses joystick only.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Atle

A joystick should work like a mouse, I've used three different pointer systems and they worked well without effecting the other, whatever was used, controlled the mouse, his included active one switch.
Some joysticks also work like a keyboards, back in my day making flight testing systems for NASA and USAF, we used a off the shelf top-of the line joysticks, just added stiffer springs and a lot of lead to produce the feel of the real flight joystick. It was a mapped keyboard input.

My view is to start with the hardest (oneSwitch) and continue to add functionally (oneClick - remote wireless oneSwitch) multiSwitch (integrating multiple OneSwitches ) headTracking (mouseCam), eyeTracking (like mouseCam but closer on eyes) JOYSTICK, then finally Voice control.
The final puppy should have all the above and be engineered to transition cleanly to whatever setup is available.

Fortunately, almost all this is already in some stage of use, but joystick control would be useful, so go for it, it should be easier than most of the above list, and I do not know if anyone is currently working on it. If it maps as a keyboard, then it would be very easy to merge with current code, as a mouse mapping it would be easy if that is the need, would need to map a button as the oneswitch, which could be harder.

Hi Atle - at the moment I don't know of any joystick solutions in puppy. This is one of the things I want to work on once I have fully set up the one-switch pups to my satisfaction.

A joystick pup would probably benefit quickly from having a thread of it's own if there is not already one, as I think there are probably a significant number of forum members who might have info to offer due to their gaming experience.

One question would be - how much control does the disabled user have? Are they only able to use the four directions, or are they also able to manipulate the other mouse buttons etc that are on a gaming mouse? (I guess it depends on the individual disability...)

This person can handle a electric wheelchair with a joystick. The joystick system is also used on the PC, that currently runs a shitty Window. The PC joystick is a special one for severely disabled with 4 large buttons that probably has some functions in Windows with a device specific driver(?)

The joystick is without small buttons like you see on a gaming mouse and his capability does not support small buttons neither.

But he does the 4 ways on the joystick and can handle that and some larger buttons as well.

I think the joystick is USB and I shall test drive it using whatever Puppy desired to see if it comes up as anything.

Quote:

A joystick should work like a mouse, I've used three different pointer systems and they worked well without effecting the other, whatever was used, controlled the mouse, his included active one switch.
Some joysticks also work like a keyboards, back in my day making flight testing systems for NASA and USAF, we used a off the shelf top-of the line joysticks, just added stiffer springs and a lot of lead to produce the feel of the real flight joystick. It was a mapped keyboard input.

My view is to start with the hardest (oneSwitch) and continue to add functionally (oneClick - remote wireless oneSwitch) multiSwitch (integrating multiple OneSwitches ) headTracking (mouseCam), eyeTracking (like mouseCam but closer on eyes) JOYSTICK, then finally Voice control.
The final puppy should have all the above and be engineered to transition cleanly to whatever setup is available.

Fortunately, almost all this is already in some stage of use, but joystick control would be useful, so go for it, it should be easier than most of the above list, and I do not know if anyone is currently working on it. If it maps as a keyboard, then it would be very easy to merge with current code, as a mouse mapping it would be easy if that is the need, would need to map a button as the oneswitch, which could be harder.

Just wanted to bring to your attention that Billtoo has published a pet of Ratpoison, a window manager which does not depend on the use of a mouse/trackball; that is window functions can be performed solely thru keyboard commands. See the following post for the pet, a launcher which can be used in conjunction with it for quick access to favorite applications, and Ratpoisons default keybindings.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=739237#739237

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